Brian Cashman insists Trent Grisham’s return won’t preclude Yankees from Cody Bellinger pursuit

Brian Cashman said it before Trent Grisham accepted the qualifying offer, and he doubled down on it two days after.

While the Yankees will have certain limits on where they would go to land a free agent — a la Yoshinobu Yamamoto or Juan Soto — having Grisham back at a $22.025 million salary will not stand in the way of how hard they go in their pursuit of re-signing Cody Bellinger as well.

“Like anything else, there are certain salary levels that we’ll tag out at,” Cashman said Thursday night at the Covenant House Sleep Out at Javits Center, where he was taking part for the 14th time to raise funds and awareness for youth homelessness.

“That’s yet to be determined. But we’ve driven hard to get things done at times. We’ve driven hard and still not gotten things done because the markets — whether it was the Yamamoto one or the Soto one — they go on and on and on and places you never expected. So you just don’t know how free agency’s going to work. So that’s why it’s so important for me to do what I’m always doing — what all GMs are doing — which is engaging your fellow GMs and the agents.”

As an example, Cashman said he spoke with agent Casey Close on Thursday about the top free agent outfielder, Kyle Tucker, along with his other clients like first baseman Paul Goldschmidt and right-hander Michael King.

And he spoke with Scott Boras on Wednesday about Bellinger and Japanese right-hander Tatsuya Imai.

Grisham returning at a much higher average annual value (compared to his $5 million salary this year) brought the Yankees’ projected 2026 luxury tax payroll to $281 million, per Cot’s Contracts, at a time when Hal Steinbrenner has said that having a $300 million payroll is “unsustainable.”

Yankees general manager Brian Cashman talks to the media during the Covenant House Sleep Out event at the Jacob Javits Center in New York on Nov. 20, 2025. Jason Szenes / New York Post

But Cashman insisted he still has the financial flexibility to do what he needs to do this offseason.

“I’m not going to tip our hands on going hard for anybody, [but] Bellinger is an obvious one,” he said. “We can play a little bit and not be silly about not saying that. But other than that, I’m not going to say who we will lean more in on or not. But certainly engaging all these players in the marketplace and trying to find out what the cost of acquisition is and see how it would fit for us.”

As for Grisham accepting the qualifying offer Tuesday — which came as somewhat of a surprise externally — Cashman said he was “50-50” on whether it would happen.

He viewed Grisham as the “third-best outfielder” in a thin outfield market but acknowledged the center fielder likely would have had to wait for Tucker and Bellinger to sign first, which came with some “gamble.”

“We’re happy he accepted because it’s one important piece taken care of,” Cashman said. “He gives us some comfort and security. So we have [Aaron] Judge, we have Grisham, and I’ve got the pairing of a competition between [Jasson] Domínguez and Spencer Jones, at the very least. But I also have the marketplace that has Bellinger in it, Tucker in it, others in it, trade stuff to consider, too. So we’ll see where all that takes us.”

The Yankees bringing back Grisham at a high AAV is something of a gamble, as well, given that his breakout season in 2025 came after three straight below-average offensive seasons.

Yankees general manager Brian Cashman is seen in his sleeping bag during the Covenant House Sleep Out event at the Jacob Javits Center. Jason Szenes / New York Post

But Cashman said the Yankees believe what the 29-year-old did this year — 34 home runs with an .811 OPS — is sustainable.

“All the underlying information that leads you to believe — real or not real, it points to the real arrow,” Cashman said. “All the support information backs up that the changes he made are real and it should continue. … And the fact that he did it here. It would be a little riskier if that happened somewhere else and we imported him because then you don’t know the New York factor and can they do it here with the pressure?

“He did it all [here], and he was doing it home and road, too, so it wasn’t the Yankee Stadium effect or what have you. He answered a lot of questions. It came unexpected, [but] thankful it did.”